Microsoft is killing itself

A majority of tech journalists and bloggers consider Windows untouchable. Walk into the media room at any international tech event and you will see most journalists and bloggers typing their posts on Apple MacBooks. It is almost fashionable to hate Windows.

I am not part of that crowd.

Despite its flaws – yes, there are several – I love Windows. It is messy and chaotic. And it doesn’t look as good as OS X. Maintaining the OS is also an issue with all the dead registry entries and empty folders piling up deep within the system with use. But I love Windows for the flexibility it provides. When the going gets tough, I find Windows machine gets going.

Windows powers the overwhelming majority of computers because it is essentially an open platform. People can create all sorts of applications for it and users can tinker with it in all sorts of ways. More importantly, Windows supports millions of hardware combinations. And it does a terrific job.

By all means, Windows has been a fantastic success for Microsoft. That is until now.

But where I disagree is in the cause of this doom and gloom. Microsoft has fallen behind not because Google and Apple are magically superior to it. The company is losing the race because not only has it stopped innovating Windows, which happens to be the software that made it a dominating force, but has also undermined the personal computer, the platform which used to bring in money for it.

Microsoft is in trouble because it hasn’t done anything really new in the last decade for personal computer users. Worse, the company’s lethargy and inability to supercharge the ecosystem has hit the whole computer industry hard.

See around yourself. Windows XP still powers around 40% computers in the world. There is a reason for that. People – and we are talking about average consumers here – just don’t feel any need to step up to the new operating software. Windows XP is still fantastic for their needs, which happen to be web browsing, storing of documents and images and watching YouTube videos. Yes, there are also 44% users who use Windows 7 now. But many of these users got the new OS when they bought the new PC. Not many, especially those not too tech-savvy, have updated.

But how has Microsoft undermined the personal computer? In several ways.

Consider the minimum specifications for Windows, the operating system that powers majority of personal computers:

The interesting bit here is that if you bought a decent computer in 2004 or 2005, it will probably handle Windows 8 just fine. Over the years, the hardware has become incredibly powerful. But Microsoft has not moved to take advantage of this hardware. When you set the hardware threshold too low, it is difficult to add features that can make a consumer go wow and nudge him to upgrade to a new computer. Instead, Microsoft has relied on faux user interface changes like Aero to push consumers to update.

I call it failure of imagination. The amount of horsepower that mainstream computers pack in today is astounding. In 2004, IBM’s BlueGene became the top supercomputer in the world with a theoretical performance of over 70 teraflops. This machine had over 16,000 processors and was created at a cost of millions of dollars. In 2013, if you spend around $1500 or Rs 1 lakh in India, you can assemble a computer with a theoretical performance of around 10 teraflops!

But because of Microsoft’s failure to innovate software fast enough, for the majority of consumers these computers are no better than the computers of 2006 and 2007. There is just no software innovation that can make use of the powerful hardware available in mainstream computers and delight customers. Compare that with iPad. It has a fraction of hardware capabilities of computers and yet it has software, albeit basic in functionality, that can delight an average customer.

People have stopped buying or upgrading personal computers because they don’t see any value in it. They have stopped upgrading the OS because it is essentially same. The core software stinks because it brings nothing new to the table. Story is same with Windows 8, which may have some cosmetic changes but doesn’t bring anything spectacular to the game. No wonder, people are barely noticing it.

Another way Microsoft has hurt the computer industry, and in turn its own business, is Xbox. There was a time when millions of people used to upgrade their computers so that they could play the latest games. But after 2007, Microsoft has made every attempt to undermine PC gaming so that it can push its gaming console. This has happened through exclusive games created only for Xbox, like Microsoft-made Halo 4, or with the help of game developers who have been told to tailor their games for console hardware, which is vastly inferior to personal computer hardware. The result: Nowadays you don’t need to build an ultrapowerful gaming computer to play the latest games. If you bought GTX8800 graphics card in 2006, you can still play almost all games at reasonably good resolution and graphics settings!

Deliberately or unconsciously, Microsoft has undermined the platform on which its business depends. The current misfortunes of the company are a direct result of this. The way to come out of this rut is simple: Microsoft should push the boundaries of what is possible with personal computers.

Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. Instead of improving personal computers, Microsoft is busy following Apple. Apple is doing tablets, so we should do one. Google is doing a phone so we should do that too. Apple is doing app store so we should also do that. Apple and Amazon have a well-stocked content store. Yes, we need that too!

Worse, with Windows 8, Microsoft is now giving up on the open nature of Windows, which was the single-biggest reason behind the success of the OS.

Tough days ahead, Microsoft. Tough days.

PS: I typed this article in my office on MS Word 2003 using a machine that was probably bought in 2005. It is powered by a Pentium 4 processor running at 3Ghz and uses Windows XP Professional (version 2002). The graphics in this machine are handled by GMA 900 Intel integrated graphics processor!

Author

Javed Anwer is a geek at heart, a man of gizmos, gadgets and games. He spends the better part of his nights, and sometimes days too, roaming the virtual alleys of WWW. When he is not on the Internet, he is most likely tweaking his computer to coax more out of it. When he is not doing any of these, he writes for The Times of India. In this blog, WebWise, he tries to document his rendezvous with technology.

Javed Anwer is a geek at heart, a man of gizmos, gadgets and games. He spends the better part of his nights, and sometimes days too, roaming the virtual all. . .